


Braze

by orphan_account



Series: Rush Summer [8]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Automail, Culture Shock, Gen, Multi, Polyamory, Rush Valley, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 03:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1211806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If you’re reconstructing it and repairing it from scratch, could you possibly make a few adjustments as well?”</p>
<p>Leaning back on the chair, Paninya balances the pencil on the tip of her nose. Lan Fan, seated across from her on the kitchen table, slides the schematics over and gestures for the pencil. Paninya flicks the utensil; it hits the tabletop, rebounds, nearly impales Akihi’s head, slams into the wall, and rebounds again only to be caught between Lan Fan’s forefinger and thumb. Akihi swallows. “Um-m, Paninya, Ling and Winry told me to tell you that they’re off in town for shopping.” Lan Fan arches an eyebrow; Akihi hides his face behind his loose sleeve. “I thought you’d want to know. S-sorry if I’m interrupting anything.”</p>
<p>“Nah, Lannie’n I were just talkin’ about what to do with her automail’s all.” </p>
<p>-------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p>Or, in which Lan Fan and Paninya discuss automail adjustments, Lan Fan comes excessively close to name-dropping the title, and Akihi breaks Winry Rockbell's favourite coffee mugs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Braze

**Author's Note:**

> The story so far: After Lan Fan's automail arm broke on a visit to Rush Valley, she and Ling have been stuck at Winry and Paninya's repair shop (with a ten-year-old apprentice named Akihi) while the arm is fixed. Two nights prior to this instalment, Winry and Paninya took the Xingese duo to a party wherein Lan Fan was attacked by a transphobic individual. Due to a series of hints, Lan Fan had come to suspect that Ling specifically brought her to Rush Valley for Winry to assist her - and after overhearing conversation between Paninya and Winry, these suspicions were confirmed. After Winry discovered that Lan Fan overheard the conversation, the two discussed Winry's intentions, and Winry agreed to treat Lan Fan as a person and not as someone needing help, while Paninya has gone back to repairing Lan Fan's automail.
> 
> As always, a gentle, humble reminder that this work is part of a series. And that if I fuck anything up, please let me know.
> 
> It's been fun writing Femslash February and I intend to continue it, but I've left this pet project series of mine for way too long to writing it, so I had to post two in one day. Aw yeah. Anyway I'm considering not finishing this or ending it with a gecko tail ending, not because I'm losing motivation, but because I've charted out the fic in my head and I love it a lot but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort to write out.
> 
> Note: The ending of this chapter will _not_ result in a pairing; don't worry. It _will_ trigger another catalyst discussion though.
> 
> The fight with Envy to which Lan Fan refers happened in the manga. I don't think it happened in Brotherhood, which is a damn shame, but what can you do?
> 
> The peach-eater thing is based off of an actual slang term for gay men in China. I researched it and it doesn't appear to be offensive, but if it is, I sincerely apologise and please let me know.
> 
> Braze is a term meaning to weld or to solder. It's also a pun off of the title of the last instalment, Blaze, since the two work in tandem in terms of Lan Fan bearing her soul to the two main other female characters of the fic.

“If you’re reconstructing it and repairing it from scratch, could you possibly make a few adjustments as well?”

Leaning back on the chair, Paninya balances the pencil on the tip of her nose. Lan Fan, seated across from her on the kitchen table, slides the schematics over and gestures for the pencil. Paninya flicks the utensil; it hits the tabletop, rebounds, nearly impales Akihi’s head, slams into the wall, and rebounds again only to be caught between Lan Fan’s forefinger and thumb. Akihi swallows. “Um-m, Paninya, Ling and Winry told me to tell you that they’re off in town for shopping.” Lan Fan arches an eyebrow; Akihi hides his face behind his loose sleeve. “I thought you’d want to know. S-sorry if I’m interrupting anything.”

“Nah, Lannie’n I were just talkin’ about what to do with her automail’s all.” Paninya leans forward, propping her elbows up on the counter, to scrutinise the retainer’s additions to the design. Small, careful strokes teasing out the shapes of circles and rectangles along the copied design. “What’re those?”

“Where I might be able to hide more weaponry.” Her port aches at the thought alone, a sharp pain akin to a hot needle driven into the centre of her nerves and twisted around. “You see? Here, I could perhaps even hide extra crossbow bolts if necessary; I’ve been considering concealing a small one beneath my usual armour. A crossbow. And here, perhaps another throwing knife. On rare occasion I’ve run out. And in this circle . . .” She glances up slightly. Paninya’s pupils have dilated to an almost comical extent, her irises entirely swallowed up by the dark disk. “What’s wrong?”

“ _More_ weight?” Eraser shavings over the paper. Paninya brushes the pink bits from the schematics and rapidly outlines the main body of the automail. “Listen, I’m no doc—ya want a doc, go talk to Al or Satella, I could refer ya if you’re lookin’ for a way to off yourself—but y’know, you _really_ don’t need more weight.” Smouldering in shame, Lan Fan spreads her palm like a paperweight on the corner of the schematics. Paninya sighs. Runs a hand through her stubby ponytail. “Haven’t noted how your shoulder’s all come up like that? Here, go all flat on the chair.”

“Go all flat on the—ah.” Perching erect as far into the lap of the chair as she can, Lan Fan flattens her shoulder blades, pushes them into the back of the chair. “Ah?”

“Ahh,” Paninya echoes, snickering. “Sometimes with ya I can’t tell if it’s a joke’r if you’re just doin’ your thing. Now, see—” Her hands curve around Lan Fan’s shoulders, press down; wiggling her back uncomfortably, Lan Fan blinks. Her right shoulder blade digs in more deeply than her left, as though asymmetry has unaligned the slope of her spine. “Feel that? That right there? You’ve been wearin’ automail so damn _heavy_ for a couple years now’n your body’s adjusted. Not that ya wanted it to.”

As soon as Paninya lets her go she twists around, pinching and feeling the shoulder blades with her right hand. Frustration rises: Without her automail arm she can’t test the twin peaks in equal measure. “Is it permanent? Is it fatal? Can something be done?” When Paninya clutches her stomach laughing, Lan Fan frowns. Narrows her eyes. “Is the thought of my death so funny to you?”

“Tch, not _that_ , dumbass. Heh, sounded like Win for a second there.” Paninya shakes her head. “It’s not lethal or fatal or any of those words, Lannie.” Lan Fan’s frown deepens into a grimace that wrinkles her chin. Paninya coughs into her arm. “And yeah it’s reversible. Happens a lot, actually, for arm amputs. Amputees, if you were wonderin’.” Lan Fan dips her head. “But uh. Uh.

“Sorry.” Undoing her ponytail, visibly damp with sweat, Paninya starts it afresh. “lost my train of thought there for a second. You’ve kinna got that effect, sometimes. I’ll be lookin’ at ya and all of a sudden it’s like I don’t even _know_ who I am because I’ve gotten all sucked up into your eyes. Grey, y’know?” Lan Fan feels a faint heat begin to rise in her cheeks, inflaming the flesh, spreading through her like a wildfire. As if she holds two live coals in the pouches of her cheeks. “Your irises, they’re this dark grey kinna colour, like—” Paninya makes a popping noise with her mouth that reminds her so much of Ling that she has to inch away to avoid reaching out to grab the mechanic, whose eyes have just lit up. Live coals everywhere; she can _see_ the light, can _feel_ the warmth. “—like I’m watching the eye of a storm that’s about to collapse in and swallow me up. Like that.

“Or like the colour of thunderheads, waaay off in the distance, before you can even see the lightning. Just a roiling bed of grey and sometimes the cry of thunder.” Paninya’s voice trails off; her wrist relaxes and the pencil rolls from her limp hand to scrawl a line The women stare at one another. “Bleh, I keep on makin’ things all awkward between us. Sorry Lannie.” The line of Lan Fan’s mouth thins: Where did this nickname come from? But at the same time there’s a certain excitement, a certain word that she cradles on her tongue but whose taste she can’t quite name.

She’s _included_ now.

Included in the in-group. Included with Pan and Win and Aki, and perhaps Ling, given that his name begins and ends in a single breath. Lannie.

Lan Fan thinks that maybe she could get used to _Lannie_ , not because she likes the name—if anyone else were to call her that, she would gently correct that someone with a fist to the face and an extracted promise to never ever pull anything like that again—but because of the sensation in her tight chest and her fluttery stomach. Warm. Warmth, like the glow of summer’s edge, pooling in her belly and radiating outwards. Swirling through the inner chambers of her thrumming drum in her chest; if her heart were a warhorse, the sun-maddened beast could have arrived in Xijing by now. Pulsing outwards to the remainder of her form, heating her fingertips and the pads of her feet.

Like the glow of summer’s edge. No, not of summer’s edge, but of summer’s beginning. The few days she’s spent in Rush Valley, no matter her early concern, have washed a toxin out of her system she hadn’t realised had seeped in. Neither cyanide nor _jincan_ nor any of the other poisons with which she is familiar, not that she knows much of poison beyond symptoms and antidotes. But a deeper poison, the most lethal of all.

She still cannot put it to a word. Sadness. No. Lack of faith. Loss of self?

She hasn’t asked Ling how much longer they’re to stay in Rush Valley. Hasn’t demanded Paninya and Winry fix her damn arm already. Hasn’t requested much at all beyond a slight scrap of attention, and has received so much more than she could ever repay.

Of all of that which she anticipated from the summer in Rush Valley, Lan Fan did not, _could not_ , have anticipated this.

Paninya continues to scribble away on the schematics. Unlike the Xingese she’s met over the course of her life, no one in Amestris—especially not Paninya—keeps xir _chi_ leashed. Yet the constant roiling of emotion no longer fazes her either, or at least not as much; over the past several days she’s learned to ignore the abrasive voices to clean out the threads to which she most wants to listen. _Needs_ to listen. “Oi, Lannie? Lan? Oi, Lan Fan, hey, you bowl of cold rice. You gone back to Xing or somethin’?”

Lan Fan bows shallowly. “Apologies. I think I, er, zoned out for a moment.”

“‘Zoned out’? Lookit, she’s been corrupted by the dark plague that is Amestrisian plague, God help us all.” But Paninya is smiling.

She pretends to fan herself. “It’s far too hot. Isn’t there a way to turn down the sun, say, create a giant transmutation circle and try to cool the Earth?”

“No way. Me, I up’n _lived_ heat down in Ishval.” She lowers her voice. Lan Fan observes her pupils dart to the corners of her vision. Towards the front of the shop. Aki. “Like I said, I spent two years fixin’ the military’s shit. You think Rush Valley’s bad? Check out the battle-side hospitals. ‘Specially with the radicals on either side. I dunno who’s right, but I _do_ know that it leaves a helluva lot of automail for Amestrisians and Ishvallans alike” Paninya sighs. Suddenly she cups her hands around her mouth and yells. “Aki! Akihi! Could you get us a pair of drinks?” A muffled yell of reply from the other room. Affirmation, judging from the abrupt business of his _chi_. “Sorry about that. Tangent. Anyway, you ever considered lightenin’ up your automail? Then you could carry more shit.”

“Lighter?”

Paninya bobs her head excitedly. “Man, Win got me all up and talkin’ ‘bout it! I thought your automail _was_ the lighter stuff anyway, lookin’ at the black, but nope. The lighter stuff’s made of carbon. You know anythin’ ‘bout nanofibres?” Lan Fan shakes her head. “Anyway the stuff’s not as _strong_ as steel, but it’s so much fuckin’ lighter in comparison and it won’t rust or freeze nearly as easily.” She flashes a grin. “Plus, people say the shit hurts less. Definitely does for me. Hips haven’t ached so bad since I switched.”

“Not as strong.” Subconsciously Lan Fan begins to massage the tender skin around the automail port. The flat cap over the inner workings continues to jut out, an alien presence. “How much weaker? It can still support you weight.”

“Not that much. ‘Least, not really anythin’ I’ve noticed. Not for day to day, anyhow.” She scratches her chin. “I figure even for _you_ you’ll up and do better with a faster punch and more weapons than an occasional bit of maintenance. I mean, the _Briggs_ guys use ‘em, and the bears are fuckin’ tough. Ever been up to North City?”

Lan Fan blinks. “South City, North City, Ishval, Creta. You’re quite travelled. You remind me of Edward.” Her nose wrinkles. “A much more agreeable and smarter version of Edward, at the least.”

“Hey, well, Win does say that people who sit ‘round all day’re boring.” The mechanic shrugs and the left shoulder of her shirt falls to rest halfway up her arm. Lan Fan is fixing  it back onto her shoulder before she recognises the movement of her hand. Snapping her arm back, the vassal stammers out an apology. Paninya catches her wrist. Fingers on her skin. Heat, back and forth. “Don’t. Thanks.”

When Paninya releases her, she quells the disappointment rising within her. “North City, you were saying? Yes, I’ve been there.”

With Envy. A moment she can never forget: chasing off the homunculus after a battle that numbed her to the core, Ling’s smug cross-armed smirk as he quipped at the so-called threats fleeing with their tails between their legs, his head-turn in her direction and yell of “ _we almost died_ ” entirely taking her off-guard from his confidence of a moment earlier. The instant she distinctly recalls becoming entirely aware that her lord was not infallible. Was not immortal. Was, in some small way . . . human.

“Entirely too cold,” she continues. “That’s the trouble, I’ve found, with this country: Either the temperature is far too hot and the sun is intent on baking you alive, or your soul freezes whole. Either everyone is silent or everyone is screaming. Love or hate. Joy or grief. No shades of grey.”

Paninya sticks her tongue out. “And what do you call me’n Win all together while Ed’s away? What, the hubbie’s away so the girlies’ll play?”

Lan Fan holds her gaze with an utter blankness of mind that Paninya laughs. The retainer stares at her hands as if her fingers have sprouted miniature wings. Perhaps that would save her from the embarrassment of the situation. “I assumed that you two would—that you two would part ways, at least in _that_ way—” Her turn of phrase prompts another chuckle from Paninya. Lan Fan balls up her hand in her lap. Her knuckles press into her thighs and she notices her arm is shaking. “—once Edward returns.”

“Oh.” For once Paninya seems at a loss for words. Throwing herself out of the window or potentially impaling herself on the automail present themselves as brilliant options from Lan Fan’s point of view. “Hey, Lannie, you don’t have anything about girls loving girls, do ya?”

Lan Fan bites her tongue. Curiously she’s been doing that more often recently. Copper. She swallows the saliva in her mouth thickly and winces from the dryness in her throat. “My people, the people I spent the first seven years of my life with, did not even consider it a possibility. In Xijing, where I was raised, men who preferred men were called peach-eaters. They didn’t think that women, I guess, could love and lust like men could, but I never heard anything _wrong_ of it. I simply never considered the option.” She has thin crescent moons of dirt under her fingernails, crescent moons she cleans away awkwardly with the edge of her pinky. One-handed. “But I see nothing wrong about you and Winry.”

“Good, ‘cause we weren’t askin’ for your approval anyway. But listen, Lannie, Win and I don’t _know_ what’s gonna happen. I think she just wanted a fling ‘cause open relationship and all’n then she fell in love with me for keeps and now she just doesn’t know.” Lan Fan can hear Paninya’s voice trembling at the edges, the faint crack of someone about to cry, and agony rips through her automail port. Lowering her eyelids, Paninya inhales. Pauses. Breathes. Lan Fan feels her palm on the table; the chair scrapes. “I dunno either. Dunno why I’m tellin’ you this, either. But Lan Fan—”

As if possessed Lan Fan lunges forward, a puppet on a string, and then their noses crack into one another, and then she is kissing Paninya mouth to mouth and lip to lip, and then nothing makes sense at all.

“P-paninya, I brought the cups of— _oh_.” Ceramic shattering. A thousand fragments. Shards. Mirrors of the universe that has lost all rhyme or reason.

Somehow Lan Fan doesn’t know if she wants to find either ever again.


End file.
